Wallflower (Rear Entrance Video, #2)

by Heidi Belleau

  At least it wasn’t Introduction to Art History.

  After working up the nerve to ask someone who looked suitably older and more worldly than he was for directions to his class, he was off. The “lecture hall,” such as it was, was nothing like the huge auditoriums he’d toured at SFU and UBC during high school: it was a small, cramped classroom lined on all walls by shelves and counters covered in half-finished art, and wedged in the center of it all was a cluster of tables and chairs and a projector.

  Rob selected a seat close to the projector—this was college, he was so over pretending not to be a keener—and began to go through his bag. Pen. Pencils. Notepads, lined and unlined.

  All around him, his fellow students sat in small clusters, trading gossip over the Starbucks they’d carried over from the “mainland.” Three white girls, all in a near uniform of cardigans, floaty patterned dresses, and knee-high boots. Two Asian girls with edgy razored haircuts, one of them with a bright pink streak in her bangs, both speaking Mandarin. A mixed group of five made up of all different races and genders but who had apparently found common ground in their taste for thick-rimmed glasses. Two middle-aged women, both in hand-knit clothes. Rob vaguely recognized a couple of his classmates from last semester, but most were new faces—not that it made a difference, seeing as he hadn’t exchanged more than two words with any of them. He watched the seats fill with more people, everyone with friends or in the process of making them.

  At two minutes to the start of class, one straggler came through the door, a big guy wearing a sweatshirt, the hood pulled up over his head.

  Oh crap.

  It was ERASE RACISM guy. From the store. What was his name, again? Darryl? Dennis? Dylan.

  Dylan’s eyes landed on Rob, briefly, then glanced away, not a spark of recognition in them, thank God. Not that Rob was ashamed of working at a porn store, but that didn’t mean he wanted to cross the streams, so to speak, and especially not with a chatterbox like Dylan.

  Dylan found a seat near the back and fell into it, quickly making himself comfortable with his skater-sneakered feet on his desk and his big binder open on his lap. He kept his hood up. He didn’t talk to anyone. In fact, he seemed downright mean. Unapproachable. Nothing like the person Rob had suffered so much talking to at Rear Entrance Video, where he’d been obnoxious, but in a very friendly and maybe even charming way.

  Oh well, not Rob’s problem. He faced front, focusing on the blank pull-down screen until the professor came in.

  She seemed pretty disorganized, dropping pens and fumbling through transparencies, then spending five minutes flicking the projector’s on/off switch uselessly until one of the girls in the cardigan crew pointed out that it wasn’t plugged in.

  Once the projector was lit up and humming, she uncapped a pen and scrawled something on the projector’s surface, which appeared on the screen behind her as a purple blob. Another several agonizing minutes spent adjusting the focus knob, and finally her name came into view.

  Doctor Chastity Sylvain.

  “But you can call me Doctor Chastity,” she said with a smile, and somebody snorted.

  Someone from the back of the room.

  “And your name is?” Doctor Chastity asked with a slightly tense smile.

  Rob didn’t have to look to know who she was talking to.

  “Dylan, ma’am. Doctor Chastity, ma’am.” Before she had to ask the question written all over her face—And what is so funny here, Dylan?—he offered up, “Sorry for laughing, ma’am, it’s just that ‘Doctor Chastity’ sounds like a sexy Bond villain.”

  Doctor Chastity surprised Rob by laughing. “Or a dominatrix, but I guess Bond villain’s more PG.”

  “You said it,” Dylan joked back, and this time they both laughed.

  Maybe he was still nice, after all.

  “Since it’s the first day of a new semester, I thought we’d start by going around the room and introducing ourselves—” Doctor Chastity rolled her eyes at the class’s mass groan. “—and then go over the syllabus, which should take us to around the halfway point of class, after which I’ll be glad to dismiss you early.” No mistaking the reasoning for the emphasis on the last bit, there: their chances of an early dismissal entirely depended on how well they played along with everything that came before, namely the going-around-the-room-and-sharing part, Rob had to assume. “So how about we start with you, Dylan?”

  “You’re just pickin’ on me because you know my name,” Dylan protested.

  “Yes, and?”

  “And nothin’, just wanted to point out I was onto you. Anyway, my name’s—”

  “Stand up and introduce yourself,” Doctor Chastity corrected.

  Dylan grumbled and tossed his binder onto the desk, seeming to purposely make the act of standing up one of the most difficult things a human body could do, like a fucking Olympic event. “This is against my human rights, you know.”

  Doctor Chastity rolled her eyes at him.

  “Okay. Now that I’m standing, my name’s Dylan. I’m twenty-three, majoring in illustration, which is a fancy way of saying I draw comics.” He paused for effect, then sniffed in disgust and added, “None of that big-eyed anime shit, though.”

  Huh, Rob was beginning to like the art-school version of Dylan.

  “I was born in Nunavut, and yeah, I’m Inuit, but I got white parents, and I don’t do no soapstone carving shit.”

  “Thank you, Dylan,” Doctor Chastity said. But that will be enough.

  “You’re welcome,” Dylan replied, deadpan, and sat.

  One of the middle-aged women went next, adjusting the drape of her shawl as she stood. “I’m Theresa, I’ve been twenty-nine for fifteen years—” A polite chuckle from those seated closest to her. “—and I’m majoring in fine arts, watercolors mostly, but only because they don’t formally have a textile arts program here.”

  “We do have a very popular spinning and weaving club,” Doctor Chastity said.

  “Oh, I’m already the treasurer of that.”

  Doctor Chastity nodded to herself, arms crossed. “Of course you are.”

  After Theresa had extolled the virtues of knitting a bit more, Doctor Chastity finally waved her back into her seat so that the next person—one of the matching-glasses crew—could stand and start his own monologue, which was a rambling diatribe about why he thought art school was a crock of shit, but if he didn’t attend, his mother would be cutting him off.

  One by one, they went through the class. Like any first-year breadth requirement course, there was your requisite mix of students from all different programs and specializations. Other than Dylan, who had a weird, crass magnetism to him that Rob couldn’t ignore, Rob daydreamed for five minutes to every one minute he spent actively listening.

  Of course, by “actively listening,” he mostly meant straining to see whether it was or would soon be his turn to speak.

  And by “daydreaming,” he mostly meant thinking about Dylan.

  Why did he have white parents? Why had he travelled so far? What kind of comics did he draw? Why was he so edgy about soapstone carving? Did he recognize Rob from the store? Would they become friends? Or maybe enemies, because Rob knew too much? Would Dylan ignore him and hope Rob did the same, keeping his two lives separate?

  Well, if anything did happen between them, Rob would let Dylan make the first move, whether that meant extending a hand in friendship or extending a fist in punching. And then, because one of the cardigan girls seemed to be telling her entire fucking life story, Rob spent a few minutes entertaining the thought that it all might just be a case of mistaken identities, that the Dylan of art class and the Dylan of Rear Entrance Video were two separate Dylans.

  And since that theory was patently fucking ridiculous, that just left two-point-five possibilities: Rob was forgettable, just one Chinese kid in a Hongcouver half-million; or that Dylan recognized Rob but was purposely choosing not to acknowledge him for one reason or another. Which left . . . Was that a bad thin
g? Rob wasn’t sure. He should probably accept it as a good thing. He should be relieved that Dylan actually had some discretion, and whether that was born out of more tact that Rob had originally attributed to him or out of shame, well, that wasn’t Rob’s fucking problem, was it?

  So why did he feel so . . . Shitty? Overlooked? Unremarkable?

  Bobby.

  If Dylan had walked into that store last night and Bobby had been the one sitting behind the counter, if Rob really was Bobby, in the real world and not just the lame-o fantasy elf one, would today have gone differently? Would Dylan have recognized him? Would Dylan have acknowledged him, sat beside him, struck up a conversation?

  Her, dammit.

  Bobby was a she, and Rob was a he, and by the light of day never the twain would meet. Whatever little fantasies Rob had about alternate realities, in this world, men were men and women were women, whether you were born that way or you had a sex-change or whatever, that part didn’t matter. What mattered was that you couldn’t be both.

  He sighed miserably and pillowed his head in his hands. The girl with the pink streak was speaking now, something about repurposed industrial material reformed into disturbing and thought-provoking sculptural pieces, but Rob couldn’t bring himself to care.

  He couldn’t bring himself to care about any of them. He didn’t bother trying to remember their names, even though his resolution had been to make friends and be more social. And how in the hell was he going to do that if he didn’t even know people’s names and programs as a jumping-off point? How would he ever become the person he wanted to be if all he did was lie around moping about a person he couldn’t be?

  Next week, he decided. Next week he’d come in and sit next to someone and introduce himself.

  Doctor Chastity’s somewhat bored and annoyed voice broke through his thoughts. “And you? Excuse me? Are you asleep? Is he asleep? Can somebody poke that kid?”

  Or he could introduce himself right now, because that’s what they’d been doing before he’d taken a one-way train to Self-pityville.

  He sat up quickly. “No need to poke me. Sorry, uh, I work nights.” He cast a careful glance over in Dylan’s direction, but no look of recognition appeared on his face, even with the hint. In fact, Dylan looked a little like he was sleeping sitting up with his eyes open. Well, good. Let the guy sleep the whole way through Rob’s introduction, and maybe he’d never make the Rear Entrance Video connection.

  That settled, Rob stood and cleared his throat. Picked at a spontaneously loose thread on the sleeve of his tee. “I’m Rob Ng. That’s N-G pronounced like I-N-G. Ng. I’m nineteen—” crushing on my straight male roommate who won’t so much as glance at me “—in first year, just graduated high school.” And I wish I was a girl. “I’m hoping to go into ceramics, but I love sculpture in all its forms.” And then, because he was some kind of masochist and maybe he really did want Dylan to notice him, whether he wound up recognizing him or not, finished, “Even soapstone carving.”

  No reaction. Not from Dylan, not from anybody.

  And goddamn if Rob couldn’t help but think that if it had been Bobby telling that joke, they’d have all—Dylan included—been in fucking stitches.

  Rob drummed out a distracted rhythm on the counter with his highlighter, eyes slipping half focused from the pages of his textbook to the watch on his wrist and back again. One more hour until the store closed, ten more pages to read, and good God, was it really only his first day of this? He sighed, groaned, read two lines of the exact same paragraph he’d been trying to read this entire shift, then slammed the textbook closed. Maybe he’d have better luck on the bus home tonight. Or the bus to school tomorrow morning. Or not at all.

  Capping his highlighter, he cast a glance around the store, looking for any task to keep his hands busy. He felt weirdly anxious, like he was right on the edge of something important, some change or transformation or decision . . . or maybe he just needed to get a new prescription for Zoloft.

  But the shelves were all neatly stacked, the returns all put away, the toys all dusted, and even the peepshow booths were acceptable enough that he didn’t feel guilty not cleaning them, and he sure as hell wasn’t antsy to the point of raising his standards there. In fact, he wasn’t sure he could get to that point; he didn’t even like his own cum, let alone someone else’s, let alone someone like Charlie VIP’s.

  With nothing else to do, he was just about to start counting out the till early when the doorbell chimed.

  Customers. Of course. Two college-aged guys, one in a UBC hoodie and the other in a Hollister ball cap. Drunk, judging by the way they were swerving.

  Well, at least it wasn’t Charlie VIP . . . or Dylan. Rob wasn’t sure he could get away with not being recognized more than once.

  “I cannot believe we met Chichi Yamaguchi,” Hollister Cap said, leading the charge toward the Asian Fetish section.

  “Yeah, well, I can’t believe you seriously got her to sign your abs,” his buddy replied, to which Hollister Cap stopped and pulled up his shirt, revealing a chiseled stomach with a black Sharpie scrawl.

  “I’m never going to wash this stomach again,” he said before dropping his shirt. The two of them disappeared behind a tall shelf, their loud drunken voices still carrying to Rob’s ears.

  “Gross, dude. Not even after practice?”

  “Not even after practice.”

  “Well, whatever, you enjoy your life not showering. Me, I’m gonna make her my wife.”

  “You gonna marry a porn star? Dude, naw.”

  “That’s why they call it making an honest woman of her.”

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh. Only honesty you’re gonna get is when she tells you she gave you the clap.”

  “Chichi Yamaguchi is an unspoiled Chinese flower.”

  “Chichi Yamaguchi is Japanese.”

  “Chinese.”

  “Japanese.”

  They went on like that for way too long, until Rob had to sit on his hands to keep himself from sticking his fingers in his ears. That kind of thing probably wouldn’t be considered good customer service if they caught him at it.

  “Well, whatever she is, she’s fine as hell. Tiny little titties.”

  “Not enough girls in porn brave enough to say no to fake tits.”

  “Chinese girls don’t fuckin’ get fake tits.”

  “Japanese.”

  “Do you think it’s weird to rent a video with her after we just met her?”

  “I wanna jerk it with the hand that shook her hand.”

  “No fuckin’ way you’re jerking off in front of me, man. That’s gay.”

  “So you’re saying that if Chichi Yamaguchi was here right now and asked us for a threesome, that would be gay? Even if she was sucking you off and I was fucking her, Chinese fingercuffs style?”

  “Japanese.”

  “Whatever, man. You think that would be gay?”

  “Long as you don’t stare into my eyes the whole time.”

  “So how’s that different from jerking off to porn of her?”

  “Okay, but I better not catch you looking at my junk.”

  “Yeah, I’m gonna have Chichi fuckin’ Yamaguchi getting it up the ass in front of me and I’m gonna be looking at your dick.”

  “Told you you were a fag.”

  “Bend over and I’ll show you how much of a fag I am.”

  “Sick, dude!” said the guy in the UBC sweatshirt as they rounded the shelves again, and Rob quickly schooled his face into neutral blankness, like he hadn’t heard a word of their ridiculous conversation. Homophobic. Racist. Asinine.

  Hollister Cap dropped the DVD case on the counter. Chichi Yamaguchi winked up at Rob through her circle lenses and fake eyelashes, cupping her breasts in both hands with a Photoshop-enhanced pink blush. “Hey little man, quit drooling and do the rental. Get your own DVD.”

  “WE WANT TO RENT DVD. DVD. RENT,” UBC Sweatshirt added, using expansive hand gestures for emphasis, then looked to Hollister Cap for app
roval. They both laughed.

  Ah yes, pretending Rob didn’t speak English. The height of comedy. Rob forced himself not to roll his eyes. “Yes. I just need your membership card.” A couple of years ago, when he’d been younger and meeker and more self-loathing, he’d have tried to tell them he spoke English just fine and had been born here, and he would say it all with a carefully rehearsed Canadian accent, no trace of his parents in it. Now he was through giving a shit. These guys didn’t deserve an apology, and they didn’t need an explanation. They weren’t ignorant (in the traditional sense of the word, at least), they were just fucking assholes.

  “What, you need a card? What the fuck kind of place you running here?” UBC Sweatshirt spat.

  “A normal video rental place?” Rob asked, not sure what else he was supposed to say.

  “Man, that’s bullshit, I don’t want to tell you who I am. Shit, why does anyone even come here anyway when they got the whole internet?”

  “The personal service?” Rob muttered to himself, and then his eyes bugged out. He hadn’t meant to say that. Oh God, abort, abort, abort, do not engage meatheads.

  “The fuck? Are you coming on to us?”

  “What was that, porn guy? You wanna give us some ‘personal service?’”

  Sigh.

  “C’mon man, let’s get the fuck out of this sketch shop and watch her on JerkTube instead.” UBC slapped his cap-wearing compatriot on the back in a show of meathead solidarity, and they stormed away together, extending matching middle fingers at Rob just before they slipped out the door and it slammed shut behind them.